70 AD
Titus’ soldiers raise a battery of dirt to break into the Antonia fortress overlooking Temple Mount. However, the rebels bravely dig a tunnel beneath it and set it on fire, causing the massive pile to collapse. The Romans have Jerusalem surrounded by a circumvallation wall. They can now focus their efforts on breaking into Temple Mount. The people inside the city have been suffering from hunger and thirst for months. Titus’ legionaries eventually manage to rebuild the battery and take over the Antonia fortress. The wall dividing that structure and Temple Mount is pounded for six days. When it finally collapses, the Roman soldiers pour into the adjacent square. On the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, in the year 70 AD, the Temple is set on fire. Throughout the surrounding area, the zealot Jews continue fighting their enemies to the death – and some manage to escape to the upper city.
Jerusalem is now almost entirely destroyed. However, from this physical devastation, a deeper and more spiritual Judaism will blossom.
“Until about the fifth hour of the day they were overborne, and shut themselves up in the inner [court of the] temple. 5. So Titus retired into the tower of Antonia, and resolved to storm the temple the next day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to encamp round about the holy house. But as for that house, God had, for certain, long ago doomed it to the fire; and now that fatal day was come, according to the revolution of ages; it was the tenth day of the month Lous, [Ab,] upon which it was formerly burnt by the king of Babylon; although these flames took their rise from the Jews themselves, and were occasioned by them; for upon Titus’s retiring, the seditious lay still for a little while, and then attacked the Romans again, when those that guarded the holy house fought with those that quenched the fire that was burning the inner temple; but these Romans put the Jews to flight, and proceeded as far as the holy house itself.” (Josephus Flavius, The Jewish Wars, Book 6, Chapter 4, paragraph 4-5)
Realization is transforming ideas and plans into concrete results – in the same way that God has the power of creation.
